It may be doubted if such persons ought to marry at all. Rousseau is another instance of domestic infelicity; and so are Milton, Dryden, Addison, Steele; indeed, the list could be indefinitely extended. A young painter of great promise once told Sir Joshua Reynolds that he had taken a wife. "Married!" responded the great master; "then you are ruined as an artist." Michael Angelo's answer when he was asked why he never married will be remembered: "I have espoused my art, and that occasions me sufficient domestic cares; my works shall be my children." The marriage of men of genius forms a theme of no little interest in the history of literature. It is herein that genius has oftenest found its sunshine or its shadow. Even Emerson has said, "Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged from the beginning of the world that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?" Rousseau married a kitchen-girl, and Raphael allied himself for the last eleven years of his life with a common girl of Rome, whom he first saw washing her feet in the Tiber. Judging from her portrait, which he painted, and which still hangs in the Barberini Gallery, she was by no means beautiful, though the ensemble of head, face, and neck strikes the eye as forming a very attractive whole. Margarita belonged to the lower classes of the Eternal City, and when Raphael died she went back to her former obscurity. There must have been many noble qualities in this young Roman girl, to have held the consistent devotion of so great an artist for an entire decade. She must have possessed some inspiring influence over him other than forming his mere physical model. Sympathetic she undoubtedly was, or else no such union could have lasted; and one feels that he must have imparted to her a portion of the glowing aspirations which fired his own genius. Goethe married to legitimize his offspring; Niebuhr, to please a mistress; Churchill, because he was dispirited and lonely; Napoleon, to obtain influence; Wilkes, to oblige a friend; Lamartine, in gratitude for a fortune which was offered to him, and which he rapidly squandered; Wycherly married his servant to spite his relations. And so we might fill pages with brief mention of the influences which have led men of note to assume matrimonial relations. Balzac's marriage forms a curious example. He met by chance, when travelling, a youthful married lady, who told him, without knowing who he was, how much she admired Balzac's writings. "I never travel without a volume of his," she added, producing a copy. Greatly flattered, the author made himself known to the lady, who was a princess by birth, and who became his constant correspondent until the death of her husband, when she gave him her hand and fortune. They were married, and settled to domestic life in a château on the Rhine.